Your Right to Know

A Holocaust memorial on the Statehouse grounds will be built over the objections of a former
state legislator who questions its appropriateness and the precedent it sets.

Richard H. Finan of Cincinnati, former Ohio Senate president and current president of the
Capitol Square Review and Advisory Board, said his agency — which oversees the Statehouse and
grounds — was “bypassed” by Gov. John Kasich, who came up with the idea.

Finan said he’s not opposed to a Holocaust memorial, but questions whether it fits at the
Statehouse, completed in 1861 and restored in 1996 to its Civil War-era look. He also challenged
the idea of building a memorial on the Statehouse grounds atop the underground parking garage and
passageways leading to other state buildings.

“You can’t build a memorial over that parking garage. It’s not built to withstand that kind of
thing.”

But that’s precisely what legislation signed Friday by Kasich calls for: an outside memorial “to
victims of the Holocaust and to the Ohioans who participated in the liberation of the death camps
during World War II.”

The location of the memorial, how it will look and the cost are not specified. The state will
pay for preliminary site work; private funds are to cover the rest.

The idea sprang from Kasich on May 4. At a Statehouse Holocaust memorial observance, he said the
Statehouse Rotunda should have a memorial to “teach people about man’s inhumanity to man, best
exemplified in the Holocaust.”

The Holocaust was the genocide of 6 million Jews in Europe during World War II at the hands of
Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler. When the proposal was introduced in the governor’s recent
budget-revision bill, Finan took the unusual step of making an unscheduled appearance before the
Ohio House Finance Committee. He made an impassioned speech urging lawmakers to add the Capitol
Square board to the Ohio Arts Council so both groups could jointly decide on the details of the
Holocaust memorial. The change made it into the bill signed by Kasich.

Finan said he’s also concerned that other groups may come forward seeking a memorial or a statue
at the Statehouse.

Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols said the governor’s office held a meeting with Finan on the subject
last year. “We intentionally reached out to him.” In addition, Finan was present for Kasich’s
remarks at the Holocaust observance last year.

Nichols said the administration supports the idea of the Capitol Square board and the Arts
Council working together on the project.

Plans already are moving ahead on the Holocaust memorial, said Joyce Garver Keller, executive
director of Ohio Jewish Communities, who has helped coordinate the project.

“I’m hopeful the Capitol Square board will work very closely with the governor’s office and the
Ohio Arts Council in making this happen,” Keller said. She is anticipating that ground would be
broken next year, with completion in 2014.

“The focus is Ohio,” she said. “This isn’t a national-international monument. We thought about
survivors that live in Ohio as well as liberators that live here. We always begin by honoring the
dead and our commitment to survivors. It’s also about educating ourselves and others about the
concept of ‘never again.’ ”

The annual Holocaust Commemoration will be held April 17 at the Statehouse. As usual, it will
include personal stories of Holocaust survivors.

Keller said there is urgency to completing the memorial because many survivors, and the American
soldiers who helped free them, are dying. There are about 1,500 to 1,800 survivors living in
Ohio.